Space Archaeology: Let’s discover history together

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It is often said that a people without history is akin to a tree without roots. A tree without its roots is weak. It does not have the strength or the ability to withstand storms.

In a time like ours, history isn’t given much thought to- it takes a back seat to several other modern problems.

The discovery of ancient history was earlier a task open to the rich, and even today, something privy to an exclusive group.

However, this is something that archeologists want to do away with by the democratization of it. This can be done with space archeology.

– Space archeology is basically the processing of satellite images using algorithms to notice the differences in the light spectrum. The differences indicate buried things, damages or the presence of things in the area. After using this to pinpoint an area, the archeologists proceed to survey and excavate it.

– It opens up a previously exclusive job to a larger number of people. Seeing as up until now only about 1% of the Egyptian delta has been discovered by man, opening this up to more people will hasten the process of uncovering our history.

– Space archeology opens up the possibility of finding millions of places with our shared history on it. The discovery of history is something that will make us aware of our full potential and the journey to discovering that, can be deemed as the greatest story of all if we put in our mutual efforts.

Sarah Parcak has explained about space archeology in a TedX talk that you can watch here.